Dark Tales Of Lost Civilizations (19 page)

Slowly, I turned around and saw where the sound was coming from. My dad. I should’ve known. He found us. He didn’t look like his usual self. Not exactly. The skin on his face was missing, and one of his eyes was gone too. A wrinkly hole was where his eye should be. But his smile was the same as always with his top teeth a little bit crooked.

I raised my hand to wave and say, “Hi Dad,” just as Jamie started to scream. I turned around and watched my friend run away from the playground. He left his shovel and bucket in the sand. Screaming and flailing his arms, Jamie’s body shrank smaller and smaller until I couldn’t see him waving anymore. He was gone.

My cheeks were hot. I turned to my dad. His eye and skin had grown back.

“You scared him away again!”

Shaking his head, my dad said, “He’ll be fine.”

“No, he was really, really scared!”

My dad reached out to touch my shoulder with a serious look on his face. “Skye, you don’t need to worry about your friend. He’ll be back. He’s awake by now. Probably with his mom, Melinda, beside his bed, holding him close, whispering that it was all just a dream.”

I pulled away from my dad’s hand. “But he still might be screaming and scared. And now he probably hates me. He won’t want to be my friend anymore. Maybe he thinks that this is all my fault, but it’s not. It’s yours. You’re the bad guy.”

“Skye you aren’t supposed to play with the dreamers. I thought I could leave you alone this time.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“I’ve explained this to you before . . . the way things work. I thought you understood.”

“No, I . . . It doesn’t make any sense.”

“What part of it doesn’t make sense?”

“The whole thing! Why do Jamie and all the others wake up when they’re already awake? And if they are waking up, why don’t we ever do the same? Why do we stay here while they run away, screaming, disappearing? It’s just not fair. All my friends hate you, and I hate you too.”

My dad sighed. Looking at the ground, he cleared his throat and said, “Skye, I’m sorry. Things weren’t always like this. They were a little bit different before.” When he raised his chin and looked at me, his eyes were wet. He gave me a small smile. “You probably would’ve liked our old home better than this one.”

I didn’t understand. This was the only home that I remembered. “What other home?” I asked.

Reaching down to rub his hand against my head, my dad said, “We used to live in the same place where Jamie lives. We used to wake up like he does every morning or in the middle of the night, but then we moved to this place where Jamie and all the others only visit when they fall asleep.”

Dad hadn’t told me this before, so I was surprised. I wondered what the other place was like, the place where Jamie runs away to. Just when I was about to ask this question, I felt it.

The call.

It was time to go scare another friend, another man, woman, or grandma. The sand rose from the playground as the wind blew very hard. Then the sand began to move in circles, swirling around us, the monkey bars, and the twirly slide. The wind howled, and I covered my ears to shut out the sound. Then the ground began to shake so hard that I fell to my knees. I felt my dad’s hand on the back of my t-shirt, pulling me to my feet. And he yelled something, but I couldn’t hear the words because of the wind and because I was screaming too.

My knees bent, and I fell forward toward the sand again. Except my knees never hit this time. The shaking stopped.

=[]=

We were suddenly in a crawl space behind a set of stairs. Footsteps thudded along the ceiling above us as someone approached the basement door. The footsteps hesitated for a second then someone twisted the knob. As the door creaked open, a small slat of light poured down the stairs, only to be blocked by a shadow. Judging by the silhouette, a tall, thin, elderly woman with curlers piled atop her head would soon descend the stairs. Slowly, cautiously, she lowered one slippered foot onto the first step.

I reached beside me to place my palm on my son’s shoulder. He was shaking. As soon as I made contact, Skye wrenched his body away from my hand. I had almost forgotten; I’m a monster, and at the moment he hates me. Leaning to him I whispered, “Skye, pull yourself together. Jamie is fine. The nightmare is over for him.”

Skye responded with a sniffle and a whimper. The footsteps above us ceased their descent, and a thin voice called out, “Who’s there? Walter, is that you?”

I turned to Skye, holding my finger to my lips. “It’s your turn.”

“Dad, I don’t wanna.”

“Dammit, Skye, just do it. This will all be over before you know it.”

“But it’s not nice.”

“You need to scare her before she wakes up.”

“But whyyyyyy?”

“Because that’s what we’re here for. We can’t leave until she’s had a fright. Now go on.”

The woman commenced her walk down the stairs. Skye stayed seated with his head down. He wasn’t budging, so I took matters into my own hands. Waiting until the woman’s feet reached our eye level, I wrenched Skye’s wrist from the side of his body and thrust his tiny hand through a space between the stairs. I then placed my fingertips on top of his own and grasped the woman’s ankle with both of our hands.

Skye screamed, “Don’t dad!” as she halted her descent. The woman looked down and yelped. As soon as her body lurched forward, her ankle disappeared from our grasp, and the ground began to shake. Wind blew the basement door wide open, smacking it against the wall. Skye began to cry with his head between his knees. Thankfully he didn’t look up to see the staircase collapse above us.

=[]=

That poor old woman. I didn’t want to grab her ankle. Dad made me, and I didn’t like it. She almost fell down the stairs! No matter what Dad says, I can’t get used to this stuff. He says I should like it, that it should make me happy, but it doesn’t. It makes me sad and angry and confused. Sometimes I feel like throwing up. One time I did throw up when he started bringing me along on his nightmares. He was doing some really bad things this one night. He had an ax and was chasing a man while dragging me behind him through the woods. Eventually, he caught the guy who was screaming and crying. He tied the man to a tree while I sat in a pile of leaves and felt very cold. The guy’s glasses were crooked because he had tripped and fallen over a tree root when my dad was chasing him. He was saying, “No, no! Please don’t!” and my dad held the ax in front of his face.

My dad said, “Please don’t what?”

Then the man said, “Please don’t kill me.”

My dad stepped closer to him, looked at him real close, and laughed. A mean laugh. Then he held the ax high above his head with both hands and said, “Don’t worry about this, Skye. Everything will be okay.” I watched him bring the ax down into his own leg, and once it hit, the man with the crooked glasses screamed. I screamed too. There was blood on my dad’s pants.

I said, “Dad stop! You need a band-aid. You have an ow-ie!”

But he didn’t care. He held the ax up high again and brought it back down into his leg. Onto the same patch of blood. I put my hand in front of my face, so I didn’t have to see him hurting himself over and over again. But I knew what was happening anyway because I could hear the ax hitting my dad’s bone, and I could hear the guy who was tied to the tree. He screamed louder every time the ax hit.

The screams did stop though. That’s when I peeked through my fingers. I shouldn’t have done that. I saw the ax, covered in blood, on the ground beside my dad. He was sitting and holding onto the bottom part of his leg that he had cut off. The guy on the tree looked very scared. He was breathing very fast and looking at my dad’s leg then he was looking at my dad. Back and forth, back and forth. Then he started whimpering. My dad said, “Shut up,” then he chucked his bloody leg at the man. It hit him in the chest and left some blood on his forest-green flannel nightshirt. That’s when I threw up into my own lap and cried with my head hanging down.

I looked up when my dad started talking again. He laughed and said, “You should’ve gone before you went to sleep,” pointing at the wet spot on the front of the man’s pajama pants.

The man said, “Huh?” He looked down and looked very surprised. Then all of a sudden he wasn’t there anymore. It was just me, my dad, the tree, the blood, the leaves and the throw up. My dad turned around to look at me. When he noticed the mess, he said, “Oh Skye,” and his face turned from very happy to very sad. He tried to walk toward me, but a bunch of leaves blew up into his face, and the ground started to shake. I was glad for this because I didn’t like what he had done in this place, and the shaky ground meant that we would get to leave soon.

=[]=

I’m glad we were able to attend the ball. It’s nice to have all of us together in one nightmare once in awhile even if it’s just once a week or once a month. Reminds me of old times. These days, everyone is just so busy orchestrating their own nightmares that it has become extremely rare for us to all occupy the same dream.

With Skye at my side, I circled the room with a half-empty champagne flute in hand. We stopped at quite a few tables and chatted with old friends. Mostly, we reminisced, recollecting funny and embarrassing moments of years gone by. Like the time in grade school when Bonnie Dunham brought her tapeworm to show-and-tell and the other classmates, the majorities, didn’t cry. They didn’t vomit or cringe. They weren’t fazed in the slightest. Hell, one of our classmates, a majority named Nancy Corrigan, was downright amused. Our teacher even congratulated Bonnie for bringing the most interesting, educational item to show-and-tell. Poor Bonnie was hoping to gain herself some laughter from the majorities’ discomfort. Needless to say, she was quite disappointed that day. Though she’ll deny it forever, I remember Bonnie choking back tears when I walked her home from school. But at least now we can look back and find humor in it.

After visiting a few tables and sharing some laughs, it was time to get down to business. We had a job to do. I began to search for the dreamer. He wasn’t hard to find. He was alone, a man in his early to mid-twenties, standing next to the band, holding a glass of scotch. Beads of perspiration dotted his smooth forehead. In between furtive glances around the room, he sipped from his glass, swallowed, then cringed. I caught his eye. For a moment he smiled then shifted his gaze elsewhere. Leaning toward the band, he whispered something to the lead singer who nodded his head in agreement then gave a quick cue and a wink to his musical accompaniment.

With a blast from the trumpet, we knew it was time to jive. The dreamer lit right up. He snapped his fingers and swung his shoulders to the beat. We all followed his lead, and his smile grew wider. Two hundred people littered the dance floor in pairs—swinging their arms, clapping their hands, kicking their feet. I held Skye by his hands and swung him from left to right. He squealed with enjoyment, and I laughed, delighted to make him happy for once.

Still bouncing to the band, the dreamer scanned the crowd. His gaze eventually landed on Miss Bonnie Dunham. She was dancing alone, baiting the dreamer. Swishing her skirt from side to side, she returned the dreamer’s stare and curved her red-stained lips. It was her time to shine. She shimmied her bare shoulders, leaning in his direction, then beckoning him closer with a bend of her finger. His cheeks colored, and he smiled sheepishly as he made his way to the middle of the dance floor.

Bonnie reached out her arms and awaited his approach while shaking her hips and tapping her foot. Eventually they made contact. We all held our breath in anticipation while Bonnie kept her cool. He grasped her palms under his own, and they began to jive. They were an absolute delight to watch. Their jive was intricate, synchronized, quick paced, and flawless. We all jived around them, glancing from the corners of our eyes, waiting for Bonnie to make her move. She finally satisfied our hunger.

As the dreamer arched Bonnie into a backwards dip, we all heard it—the snap of her spine. Startled, the dreamer dropped her. She hit the crown of her head on the dance floor. The dreamer lurched forwards with his arms outstretched. His mouth was wide open as he yelled an apology to Bonnie who remained in a backwards arch with only her head and feet touching the ground. She smirked at him from upside-down. That’s when he noticed the circle of blood pooling around her head.

Eyes wide, he covered his mouth with a trembling hand and yelled, “For Christ sake, she needs an ambulance! Somebody call an ambulance!”

We continued to jive, more feverishly than ever as he stumbled around the dance floor yelling for help. Eventually he got physical. He made contact with a dancing couple. As soon as he touched the sleeve of the jiving man’s jacket, the man flung his arms away from his body—still moving to the beat of the music—and dislocated his elbow in the process.

The dreamer screamed.

“I’m sorry . . . I—I I didn’t mean—”

The dreamer backed away from the man who was smirking and waving goodbye with his forearm hanging loosely from his elbow joint.

“Oh man,” the dreamer muttered as he ran his fingers across his forehead. He turned around and came face to face with another dancing couple. Placing his shaking hands on their shoulders, he leaned toward them with his eyes darting back and forth from one person to the other. With his voice breaking, he managed to say, “You guys gotta help me. There’s some people at this ball, they need help. They need a doctor.”

The couple just smiled at him. In unison, they tilted their chins upward and craned their necks toward the dreamer. Then they twisted their necks until a sharp crack could be heard echoing from the top of both of their spines. Simultaneously, their chins dropped to their chests, and they continued to jive—smiling, with both of their heads hanging down.

The dreamer ran across the dance floor. Frantic, confused, delirious. He began to babble incoherently and gestured toward the injured dancers. Up until this point, I was able to keep Skye distracted from the events occurring around us. I swung him upside-down and sideways and spun him in a circle until we were both too dizzy to stand. We eventually lost our footing and collapsed to the ground. Our stomachs ached from laughter. Leaning back to lie on the floor, we held our bellies as tears rolled down our faces.